Dry doe Mastitis

I have an Am. Alpine named Hannah. She will be 2 next April. I got her in Sept. 06'. At that time she had a very small udder as a 6 month old and it was a lttle hard. The breeder said not worry about it. It got much larger though, to the size of a milker. It was hot and hard and lop sidded. We had the vet out and we got 12 tubes of cow treatment and 4 shots. I gave them to her and nothing changed. I was also milking the fluid out and massaging it. It just got bigger. He gave her a shot of hormone correcter and I completly stopped doing everything. Well, amazingly it shrunk!!!!! It is hardly lop-sided, not hot, and much smaller. He also said to get her bred, so we did. The buck's owner said her udder might blow up. Please explain that. Is there anything I can do to give her a more speedy recovery?

i would have taken a sample and send of to a lab. hardness in udder is never normal. a six month old doe kid getting an udder tells you that she comes from heavy milking lines. watch her very care full when she kidded, and milk her more frequently the first couple of days until the udder tissue has adjusted to the amount of milk. this might prevent her from blowing out, which means nothing more than the ligaments will not hold and the udder will get saggy :wink:

like others have said, a hard bag is never good. Has this doe ever been tested for CAE. There has been talk about linking mastitis with CAE, of course this isn;lt alwayas the case. But i found it very interesting that a friend of mine had a doe that got mastits every year, and last year she was tested for CAE and sure enough she had it.
There arwe several ways to test for mastits. We have cow strips in the first aid kit at all times. when you spray milk on the dot it turns green if the animal has it. we then send a sample off to WSU to see what form of mastits she has. If caught early it can be treated relitively easily. We heat pack the udder at least three times a day. Soak a towel in as warm water as you can stand and hold it on her udder until it gets cold. Giveing her Vit C tablets with her breakfast and dinner is said to help. my goats love the orange flavored oneswe usually give three treatments of today if not more depending on how bad it is. And ten to twelve days os penicillian.
beth

i would get her on antibiotics right away, you need to get it cleared up before she freshens or its just going to make the problem worse. Heat pack her udder as many times a day as you can. Milk all the gunk out of her and put a whole tube of today per side let it stand twenty four hours and milk her out and do the same two more times. Get her on pen, for ten or so days. And the vitamin C may help as well. It definaly won;t hurt.
beth

I think that the reason your friends doe kept getting mastitis when she also has CAE is because CAE is alot like HIV I think. So that would mean she would be more likely to get mastitis if her immune system is weakened.